Posted on Friday, January 28 2011 @ 17:32 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Microsoft executive Dileep Bhandarkar
called for low-power 16-core x86 server SoCs based on Intel's Atom or AMD's Bobcat cores, rather than ARM-based chips for future energy efficient data center solutions:
"ARM's interesting to look at, and if it lights a fire under Intel and AMD that makes us happy," said Bhandarkar, an Intel CPU and server design for several years before joining Microsoft four years ago.
The breadth of server software used in today's data centers makes use of ARM unlikely in the foreseeable future, even through Microsoft announced it will support ARM in the next version of Windows, he added.
Instead, Bhandarkar called for 16-core SoCs based on Intel Atom or AMD Bobcat cores. Such chips should integrate all the core logic and I/O functions the companies now put in separate chips, he said. "There's a huge opportunity using these smaller cores to be more energy efficient, and we are talking to both AMD and Intel [about that]," he added.
